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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411477">To Be Alive</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenaicompris/pseuds/jenaicompris'>jenaicompris</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What It Means [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Auntie Sole, Brain tumor, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Developing Friendships, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Sanctuary, Seizures, Smoking, hospital stay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 14:20:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411477</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenaicompris/pseuds/jenaicompris</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harper, dealing with the loss of her family and everything she knows, finds a delicate friendship with the traveling mayor of Goodneighbor.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor, Nora Lexington-Spencer/Nate Spencer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What It Means [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612750</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just wanted to take a moment to note that some of the concepts for Hancock's responses are from a roleplay with @antidoped of tumblr. I'm trying to rewrite everything so that nothing is their original writing, no offense or harm meant. Their writing is beautiful so it some lines may remain the same.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harper couldn’t ever really decide how to feel when she was in Sanctuary, haunted by the ghosts of a life that wasn’t really hers. She had spent a lot of time there leading up to that fateful day in October – practically every moment after they discovered Nora was sick and beyond that, when Nate needed help with Shaun.</p><p>The body of her sister was laid to a fitful rest six feet below the surface of Nora’s once-pristine backyard; Nate, Shaun’s father and Nora’s widower, had been carried from the Vault by Codsworth and buried beside his wife by his sister-in-law. Harper alternated between staring helplessly at the cobbled together headstones and avoiding the backyard entirely.</p><p>On the day in question, no closer to finding her nephew than the day she had emerged from her sister’s place in Vault 111 despite having found Kellogg and put a bullet through his eye, she sat in a mostly broken lawn chair staring at nothing. She had bought the set the chair belonged to as a housewarming present for Nate and Nora. She had had little time for much of their early marriage – when Harper was sixteen and Nora twenty-four, she began an accelerated program at CIT for mechanical engineering. Shy of eighteen, she added electrical to her plate. By twenty, she was working on her master’s thesis for robotics.</p><p>She never did finish it; a few months before it would have been prepared to submit, Nora started having seizures. The first one went mostly unnoticed; Codsworth was sworn to secrecy as the only witness (another present from Harper, a prototype built with the assistance of a lab in RobCo as a part of her internship). Two days later Nora had another seizure at the grocery store, shopping with Harper to make sure she ate. The youngest Lexington took to long periods of solitude that often left her a few pounds lighter.</p><p>Harper, to put it lightly, freaked out. Nora would succumb to a grand total of twenty-eight seizures in the three weeks prior to her death. A tumor, inoperable due to its size and location, pressed against a part of her brain and screwed up the electrical signals that passed through the area – resulting in the seizures that alerted everyone to the presence of the tumor in the first place. Too little, too late however. Nora would not die due to complications from the seizures, although they made her final weeks all but unbearable.</p><p>Nora was hospitalized after her third seizure in four days; the tumor was discovered the first day she had two with less than six hours between them.</p><p>Harper pretended to be okay while Nate fell apart after the doctor told them the prognosis. Nora Lexington Spencer – superior lawyer, new mother, devoted wife, beloved sister– was given a week.</p><p>She made it two.</p><p>Nate was a mess and so Harper was strong. She had a single-minded determination not to allow the life Nora had built to fall apart. She also refused to allow Nora to wallow, not that she was prone to it; her final days would be comfortable and sweet, despite the constant beeping of machines and dripping of the IV.</p><p>The morning Nora died, Nate had left hours before to finally get some rest. He and Harper had been taking turns with both Shaun and Nora, the parents from both sides pitching in as much as they could.</p><p>The younger sister could feel something in her bones, trepidation coursing through her as she looked at the woman that had taught her how to speak her mind and when to hold her tongue. They were both so very, very tired for incredibly different reasons.</p><p>Choking down a sob, Harper climbed gingerly into the too-large hospital bed and curled along Nora’s side.</p><p>Mrs. Spencer smoothed the Lexington girl’s dark hair down with one hand as she weakly curved the other over her younger sister’s side.</p><p>“Are you…eating?” Nora half-coughed, smiling just a little.</p><p>The noise that broke from Harper was a strangled mix of crying and laughter as she wiped furiously at her cheeks, drenched in the saltwater of her tears.</p><p>“You listen to me, Harper Alexandria Lexington,” Nora tried to sound stern, even if her voice was a mere echo of its normal self, “you take care of yourself. I won’t be around-”</p><p>“Nora, stop,” Harper pleaded, not ready to hear those words. Not ready for any of it.</p><p>“Hush, Perry,” Nora cooed, using a nickname that had died many years before, “…promise. Promise you’ll take care of yourself, baby sister.”</p><p>It took Harper a moment to be able to speak again and when she did, she tilted her head back enough to look up at the pallid face of the woman with which she shared more than mere blood, “What about Nate and Shaun?”</p><p>Harper felt more than saw the sad smile her sister wore as the older woman responded, “Them too, sweetheart. But you first. I know you’ll take good care of them both – it’s you I’m worried about.”</p><p>The sisters held each other in the darkness of the too-early Sunday morning; it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. As one’s breathing faded, rattled, and ceased the other let out a wail that could not wake the dead – no matter how hard it may have tried.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>,” Harper hissed two centuries or so later, smashing the heels of her dirty, cracked hands into her eyes to block out more than the rising sun.</p><p>Several moments later, with a shaky breath and shakier hands, Harper managed to fish a cigarette from the recesses of her pockets. She had no idea where her lighter went and so, sat in silence with an unlit cigarette dangling between chapped lips.</p><p>To pry would be uncharacteristic intrusion of Hancock, unless it was particularly important. Privacy was a valued and particularly rare commodity in places like Sanctuary. But he didn’t need to pry to strike a match and offer it to an unlit cigarette.</p><p>His appearance – more <em>presence</em> at her side startles her, but not visibly. Cocking her head back, she lets her cigarette dangle from between her lips. Harper smiles around the filter – her lips pucker, closing tight at the strike of his match. She likes that he uses matches; she has always preferred the sulfuric smell of a matchstick to the acrid smell of butane on fire. Inhaling until the end burns red, she waits a beat to expel a breathy, smoke-laden “thank you” to him.</p><p>He had only just begun to travel with her; they had made two runs from their home base in Sanctuary since he had left the not-quite-monotony of Goodneighbor. Their relationship of any sort was in its infancy and it currently consisted of mostly implicit trust in the face of danger and tentative, questioning conversation in the face of boredom. But Harper was one of the only people in Sanctuary that didn’t look at him sideways by the nature of his mug. Their connection was tenuous but it was more than a disapproving or disgusted glare. There were a few ghouls aside from himself milling around – one in particular, Olivia, seemed to appreciate his presence and person in general – but still.</p><p>Harper appreciates John for who he is – calls him ‘Hancock’ to his face and friends, ‘John’ in her head for reasons even she doesn’t understand. He is kind but not coddling, unlike Preston who presses and pities.</p><p> “Got another?” He chooses to bypass the customary ‘sister’ as he catches sight of the glitter in her eyes he doubts can be attributed to the dust in the air.</p><p>Her blue eyes slide to him when he speaks and she doesn’t hesitate; tapping a hilariously well-preserved pack of smokes to free just one, she slides the filter end between her lips and trades it for the one he had so generously lit. Using the brightly burning cherry of her own nicotine stick, she sucks gently on the second until it matches its brother. Swapping them again, she hands the younger off to John, butt-first.</p><p>“For you, Mr. Hancock?” Her voice is sodden, heavy with unshed tears, Boston accent creaky from a centuries-dried throat. “Always.”</p><p>Secretly he wonders, fleetingly, if he’ll be expected to reciprocate in some way such crisp flavor but he would not have left comfortable mayoral life to travel the Commonwealth with someone of whom he thought so little. A quirk of his ruined mouth and a small not of appreciation let her know he appreciates her sacrifice, such as it is.</p><p>She watches him, not trying to hide her interest but not staring or gawking. Studying, perhaps, the lines he makes against the green-blue of a sky threatening to storm.</p><p>”I’ll have to go in before long,” she speaks out of nowhere, her eyes losing focus on him and refocusing on the clouds in the distance. “Wonder how sick I’d get out here.” It wasn’t inflected like a question in its entirety, spoken around the end of her cigarette and fueled by smoke.</p><p>“Go?” he echoes, as if the idea hadn’t struck him. Because, honestly, it hadn’t. He had grown used to enjoying rad storms in their entirety.</p><p>Her eyes hone in again on their original target and her face softens when she looks at him; an almost, half-smile curves her lips around the nicotine supply. She wonders for a moment who he was before. What he looked like.</p><p>It’s a fleeting thought though when her eyes catch on his. Harper’s smile is soft but broader and crinkles the edges of her gaze. It doesn’t matter if he <em>used to</em> prefer cats to dogs or if he had hair like Fabio because he was there, then. Their tenuous friendship was held in high regard in Harper’s heart; he was, perhaps, her favorite – after Dogmeat, of course. Even though they had been together for fewer weeks than half her time being thawed, she had attached herself to him quickly and readily. He made her feel <em>free</em>.</p><p>What counted as his skin prickled a little with the familiarity of an intense gaze; lingering eyes were not unfamiliar to the ghoul, the mayor, or even the man before all of that. Others might have balked at the attention but Hancock was anything but shy.</p><p>It dawns on her, finally, that rarely does anyone seek her out for her company and her smile lessens as she shifts back in her chair, focusing on her cigarette. If she wasn’t so raw it might not have struck her that her companionship was so rarely sought but, as it was, it sent her into a brief fit of melancholy. She’s quiet for a moment in retaliation, puckering her lips into a small ‘o’ shape after she removes the brightly burning stick to create faint smoke circles. He watches her crumple like pre-war debris in her chair and does her the kindness of turning his gaze towards the aggressive clouds.</p><p>She stops abruptly, memories of reading <em>Alice in Wonderland</em> to her nephew bringing tears to her eyes and not the smoke that blurs the edges of her vision. She doesn’t turn to look at her companion but speaks up regardless. “How are you, Hancock?” she pauses, flicks her cigarette away from and her eyes towards him, “Anything I can do for you?”</p><p>It feels like that makes up most of her conversations of late. <em>What can I do for you? How can I help you? What do you need?</em> But if she’s busy nearly dying, she forgets about those that are already dead. For a moment, anyway.</p><p>He clears his throat, sparing her a glance but shifting his eyes to the toe of his boot. He was good at thinking on his feet and always had been. So he sucked in a breath and let out a half-truth. “Just wanted to come over and say we did a hell of a job at that super mutant camp but I need a bit of a breather, ya feel me?” He looks at her now, more composed but still clearly frayed at the edges. “ These storms, I don’t mind ‘em. But you, sister? Best make your way inside before you get dosed. Don’t need you getting’ sick on me. Let’s wait it out here.”</p><p>Harper steadies when he talks, giving her an excuse to get out of her own head long enough to refocus her thoughts on the here and now, rather the here and <em>then</em>. The use of the word ‘sister’ doesn’t hurt like it could’ve, mostly because she’s already so open and sore that it would take something harder to wound her deep enough to matter. She smiles despite herself, or <strong>in spite of</strong> maybe, and nods a little at him. “Yeah, we did. You and me, we make a good team.” And she means it. They worked well in tandem and he kept her grounded, even when he got her high. Or let her get high. Or whatever semantic game she wanted to play with her own self. She hadn’t so much as looked too long at a martini in the Before. Now, though? Nora would hardly recognize her.</p><p>While she’s lost in thought for the millionth time, he uses his foot fluidly to tug a toppled chair next to her. Both the chair and Hancock’s body groan as he settles in, joints on both popping in tandem. He exhales through his nose cavity and tries to give her an out.</p><p>“I’ll stay here, enjoy the view a bit.”</p><p>When he settles in beside her, she’s making a face at the sky again. It’s far enough away, for the moment, that she can put off the Rad-X or her escape to the slightly more protected inside of the mostly decrepit house that used to belong to her sister. He says he’ll stay outside and she mirrors his response: “I’ll stay a bit longer. I’ve got a bit of Rad-X I could take, to stay until it gets bad. I miss thunderstorms. Proper ones, that were only <em>mostly</em> dangerous.”</p><p>The way that she pulls herself from her turmoil, shifts back into conversation with him about the weather of all fucking things, reminds him of a feral lumbering from a long-undisturbed slumber. The thought leaves his skin crawling.</p><p>So, like his new partner in not-exactly-crime, he shifts his attention to something banal. “Regular thunderstorms?” One of his favorite – so far, that is – things about Harper is how she drops crumbs about her pre-war life. He likes to indulge in the stories much the same way he likes to indulge in other altogether seedier activities. “Sounds far out.”</p><p>Harper drags on the cigarette, relaxing in the chair and avoiding the gravestones in front of her by closing her eyes. She drops her head back a little, matted hair pressed between the back of her head and the lines of her seat. Out of nowhere, she murmurs the words, “Thanks, Hancock,” in a soft tone. It seems out of place, but in the mostly-silent graying afternoon it makes all the sense in the world to her. She was thanking him for a lot more than sitting, a lot more than the light, a lot more than for caring if she got sick or even having her back against all manner of scary shit out in the Commonwealth. She didn’t know if he knew but she didn’t know if it mattered.</p><p>He doesn’t let her know just how struck he is by her thanks but tucks it beneath the red breast of his frock coat like he tucks a hand beneath his head and joins her in surveying the sky for a few precious minutes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>There are some lines that @antidoped wrote because they were too good to drop, and there are some slightly doctored ones. The rest are my own. I love these guys so much, man.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She likes that he’s settled in beside her, that he’s come with her back to Sanctuary – that he expects it to be a <em>we</em> that leaves again. “You wanna come in with me when I go? There’s a big ol’ window I left opened up in the living room. Managed to get a couch in there too. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it’s serviceable. Great for watching, and a smidge less…uhh…<em>deadly</em> for me.” Her face, turned towards him again, holds a wide smile and her voice is laced with amusement, despite her mood of earlier.</p><p>She had boarded up most of the windows and the door to the carport after the first rad storm that left her vomiting for hours. She had managed to get electricity to the main house she’d set up as the hub of operations – the one across the street, the yellow monstrosity she’d hated in the Before – but hadn’t yet managed to find the parts for a second generator. That yellow house was where most everyone stayed; she let Dogmeat and Codsworth into ‘her house’ but didn’t share the space easily. It was too much a relic to her old life. It had taken her a long time to get rid of the broken furniture. At first, she had tried to save the place – spruce it up like it used to be. She almost burned it down one night, infuriated with her life as it was. Eventually, she had decided she could make better use of it – although she still did her best to make it presentable, even if she was the only inhabitant. Harper mentally thanked Codsworth regularly for managing to save the one photo – charred edges be damned – from Nate and Nora’s wedding day that smiled from a broken frame on the mostly-intact kitchen island countertop.</p><p>A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder drew Harper’s eyes to the sky, the putrid green of a rad storm eating the blue sky at the edge of the once-fancy suburb. Unless she went underground, which she could in that old cellar down the road, she would undoubtedly end up a little green but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t deal with at this stage in the game.</p><p>He made a half-hearted attempt at a joke about staying outside but ultimately grunted into a standing position. When she stood, he only barely stood taller than she did. “We freaks gotta stick together. He tosses the filter of his cigarette and stamps it beneath his boot, reaching into a pocket for a Jet inhaler only to find it empty. Harper tosses her own filter, or what remains of it, to the ground and mimics his motion of putting out what charred embers might remain after finding her feet as well.</p><p>With a disgruntled expression, Hancock tosses the useless inhaler into the community trash can Harper had replaced Nate’s mailbox with when they round the corner of the house. His mind catches on something else. “Whaddaya wager would happen if I took Rad Away?”</p><p>He knew she was smart but any real measure of intelligence; probably the smartest person he ever met, although that was a fairly easy position to take. He noticed her interest in his thoughts on the Institute and Synths but didn’t let suspicion overtake him, just answered her questions and stored his concern for when he knew more.</p><p>Somewhere slightly behind him, as he had gotten up to lead the way inside to spur her into movement, Harper’s Geiger counter, imbedded in her retrofitted Pip Boy slapped to her right wrist after some adjustments, had begun to in time with the approaching rad storm. She could feel the cool heat of radiation prickle the hair on her bare arms. She tried to dress in what she could find, remnants of Before, when she spent any real time in Sanctuary. She wears worn tuxedo pants and a mostly-intact but once-white shirt that is quite dirty with age and radiation grime. Her 10mm is tucked into the belt she stabbed and slashed to fit her waist and she adjusts it when she catches up with him. She notices John’s use of the inhaler and runs through the meager stock of drugs she’s allowed herself to keep, wondering what would best suit the afternoon and appropriately chase away the darkness in her thoughts.</p><p>Harper passes him to make it to the partially-opened door; she left it open for Dogmeat; Codsworth could work the handle, but the canine – for all his brilliance – hadn’t figured out how to grow opposable thumbs.</p><p>”Rad Away?” she repeats, making a face as she hesitates on the front step. “Well, <em>honestly</em>? I think it’d do to you what radiation does to me.” She pauses, her eyebrows furrowed as she thought a few paces inside the house. “Or maybe not? Maybe it wouldn’t do anything. I don’t know enough about the differences between your body and mine to be able to form a proper hypothesis.” She pauses again and blush reddens her cheeks as she smiles faintly when she realizes she’s rambling. “On a cellular level, I mean.” She halts and glances around them for a short breath before looking back to him as a thunder clap shakes through her chest. “Make yourself at home, Hancock. I’m going to go change.”</p><p>With her shoulder, she presses the door back once they reach it and hesitates only briefly, almost imperceptibly, before she continues on in and leaves the door wide for him to follow through. Despite the general disrepair of peeled paint and curled linoleum, boarded windows and torn furniture – it looked like home. At least to Harper.</p><p>He acknowledges euphemism with a glance, solidifying her dread with a cheeky wink. As amusing as it might be to press her, he chooses to spare her anymore embarrassment by focusing on a different part of her blurted conversation. “Don’t mind if I do.”</p><p>He takes a U-Turn to shut the door behind him, then wanders about to take in what details about his wandering companion he can glean from her base of operations.</p><p>Nuka Cola in its various flavors line the kitchen counters, (full or mostly) wine bottles dotting the same landscape. In the dead-center of island counter sat a more than slightly tattered picture frame that had probably once been half-way decent. Harper had found it somewhere, couldn’t remember now. The picture in it was scarred at the edges, blackened by time or smoke or both. The important part of it, though, was that she, Nora, and Nate were frozen, smiling forever at the camera. The wedding rings of the latter two, not quite visible in the picture, jangled lightly beneath her shirt as she moved. She looks younger by about as many centuries as she doesn’t remember, even though she feels like she should still be twenty-one. The two buried out back look alive, or like they should be. Which they <em>should</em> but there was a whole lot of <strong>should</strong> in the Commonwealth.</p><p>The woman disappeared down the hallway, voice calling back to him, “Thunderstorms were like rad storms without the radiation?” she muses in the distance. “When the rain is cool but the air is hot, it’s something else entirely.” A sigh he can’t hear so far away and she smiles to herself while, somewhere else in the house, he fingers the photograph and leaves evidence of his ruined thumb print in the dust. He shifts his attention to one of the many Nuka Cola bottles and turns it about, shaking it next his ear just to hear the fizz.</p><p>With a shrug, he replaces the bottle and finds a comfortable spot in the middle of the couch to watch the growing-closer storm through the time-shattered window.</p><p>She re-emerges a minute or two later mostly-dressed as she zips the front of her doctored Vault Suit over the last few inches of her chest. She carried in one hand her Pip Boy and, dangling between two fingers, a small plastic bottle. Draping the former over the arm of the functioning couch, she cracked open the lid and peered inside the latter. “Aha, that’s what I thought,” she shakes out a pill and then another, drops one on her tongue then slides it to her teeth and <em>crunches</em> before offering her hand to him. “Daytripper?” she asks, offering.</p><p>He chuckled. “What, for little ol’ me?” Hancock greets her in kind by sticking his well-preserved tongue out in anticipation of the pill. She hesitates only briefly, shifting the pill to two fingers on her other hand to deposit it on the outstretched muscle of his.</p><p>It is almost immediately mashed between his molars while Harper set it beneath her tongue despite the bitterness. “You should let me crack open some’a those Nukas, mix us up drinks.” He eyes her Pip-Boy and he catches on another thought when Harper crunches down on her own pill, sick of waiting for the high. “Think I could score me one of those things? I found a copy of<em> Atomic Command</em> on our last adventure… aaaaand I think we both know I’m tryin’ to wipe out the high scores.” A hitch in speech as grandiosity trickles over his senses in waves, the flavor of psuedo-confidence makes good fortune seem so likely to befall him. He rolls his shoulders, eyes on his companion’s wrist-computer. “‘Course, then I gotta consider if I should go with C.O.K. or J.O.N. as my winning initials…”</p><p>Their rapport is built upon a foundation of impulsive questions posed at random, the particularly odd ones coming from the estranged way of Hancock’s train of thought. Classics like, <em>Does that thing go off if I stand too close? </em>in referral to that fancy, ticking wrist decoration of hers. There was always something to digest to take the edge off his inhibition, get him warmed up to condone shenanigans to test his theory. After all, keeping theories rhetorical was no help to the scientific community– or any fun for him, for that matter. He’s found out shy of assaulting her with his bare hands, Hancock couldn’t trigger the damn thing. Closest he ever got to testing it to <em>that </em>extreme was knocking her side with a bony elbow, a mischievous force behind it at worst. </p><p>Harper can feel her pupils blow out, or at least she things she can, and steadies herself on the back corner of the couch when it hits her. <em>That was fast…</em> she thinks and smiles without realizing. Her gaze shifts to John and narrows, searching but smiling as she traces the outline of his lips while he speaks.</p><p>“Might as well,” is her response while she grins, sounding far more enthusiastic than the words themselves would imply. She feels emboldened somehow, untouchable, and finds his hand that had brushed hers briefly during the exchange of cigarettes earlier. Her hand itches and tingles as she slides her fingers between his, the feeling shooting through her arm like it is being pumped along with her blood. Intellectually, she believes she imagined it. She feels weak or lethargic or tired or something and relishes in the assistance of the couch for half a second after she takes his hand before she moves in the direction of the counter.</p><p>Since ghoulification, drug effects have diminished in potency. So a forte of music in her veins is but a faint melody to Hancock. The hushed notes playing as her callouses agitate the ridges between his fingers thrill him in the same way a hostile gun might. Mutinous mind, he asks for its discretion so he can steel his features, yet humor her in slight. It’s a balance he manages with a taut simper, his digits twitching– tentatively trusting.</p><p>She doesn’t flinch. Didn’t cringe. Hasn’t recoiled. Or winced. And he would know; he’s been eyeballing her so damn hard that any subtle adversity to him was sure to be detected. Always on edge, awaiting her to be hit by an epiphany. It’s stressing his exacerbated mood into a swing towards the dark side.</p><p>She brings him to what had been a top-of-the-line refrigerator and is now a glorified shelving unit. It had been stripped for parts months before. She realizes belatedly that she is still holding his hand and smiles apologetically at him as she releases him to reach for the door. It creaks when she opens it to reveal a varied assortment of spirits. On the bottom left-hand side is a tin to which she points. “Easy-access chems. I’ve got more in my room, these are just the surplus of the fun-time chems.”</p><p>Truth be told, Harper hadn’t been interested in drugs before the war. She hadn’t so much as smoked a cigarette until after her sister got sick. The cigarettes started in earnest when she found herself in the After and then the alcohol; she was hesitant to try chems until Mama Murphy introduced her to Jet. It wasn’t until she met and befriended the mayor of Goodneighbor that she started using them recreationally. It was about that time, too, that she realized she was using them to run away from her problems – so with a new perspective and a new understanding, she allowed herself to partake every now and then.</p><p>Sliding to the side she begins to rummage on a shelf that had been broken in the two centuries since she last inhabited the house and repaired in the last two months of her return. Grabbing two mostly clean glasses, as clean as anything could get nowadays, she returns to his side and sets them on the open counter. “And a Pip Boy? We can look for one, but you can use mine when I don’t need it. You know…for a map, or to make sure I’m not dying, I guess.” She grins at him, feeling like she’s hilarious despite the fact that she generally isn’t. She watches him and feels warm, warm from the inside and not like she is in the sun. “Although, I might be able to build you a terminal, if I can find all the parts. I feel like there was a working one…somewhere. I think I marked it on my Pip-” the thunder crashes and she jumps at the unexpected sound, not having paid attention to the lightning that flashed first. Her hand flies to cover her heart and she laughs nervously after, resting back against the counter.</p><p>The crash and roar of the clouds deafens the noise, so for the moment he’s reminded she’s not just a death-dealing badass. He won’t hold it against her to be flustered, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t use it as comedic ammo for later. Anyway, he likes the way the outro of the thunder rumbling and her flighty laugh intermingle, tickles him behind the ears and travels to the front of his brain like white noise. He feels like he needs to expel some of that energy. </p><p>She remembers what he said, about his initials, and laughs again but this time quieter. “J.O.N. or C.O.K., huh? Don’t suppose it’ll matter,” she grins wickedly at him, all white teeth and big eyes narrowed playfully, “…because I’ll just beat your scores. Then it’ll just have to be. H.A.H.”</p><p>Hancock scoffs and nearly chuckles. “Oh <strong>really</strong>? Well now that ya’ve totally flattened me with that witty rejoinder, how about ya help me out… Open this up, will ya?” He passes off a glass bottle, the very same he shook up earlier as a prank intended for the not so immediate future. In lieu of the premature effects of his mischief, he steps over to the side under the guise of needing some elbow room to play Commonwealth Mixologist, but with her in the corner of his eye.</p><p>When his hand is gone from hers, she is sorry for its loss – the slightest of frowns shifts her smile down as the contact breaks but she tells herself to stop being a child about it and goes back to carry on their conversation as if nothing happened. Whether she didn’t notice him wiping the sensation of her skin against his clothes or chooses not to care is entirely up for interpretation. She is so lost to the idea of having someone <strong>close</strong> again after what has been and does feel like, in those moments, <em>centuries</em> without so much as a hug that she <em>almost forgets</em> who she is and bypasses his outstretched Nuka to wrap her arms around him so she can breathe again.</p><p>She falters like she was going to move forward to do just that, a look bespeaking the crushing loneliness of being <em>no one</em> with <em>nothing</em> in a land that feels like <em>nowhere</em> passing over her face in the green of the rad storm’s flashes but it melts into a smile when she realizes he’s there, handing her a cola. She seems to shake the malaise that had momentarily befallen her in favor of wrapping her left hand around the top of the bottle, over the cap, pressing the heel of her hand into it. “Good job on the cherry, I prefer the sweetness,” she smiles at him like she’s still sixteen, pink of her tongue pressed briefly to the back of her too-white teeth before her face relaxes. “This is practically the only thing left that still tastes like sugar. Except Fancy Lads. But those weren’t ever <em>good</em>.” She laughs a little, the light nervous laugh that is reserved for moments when she thinks she’s being ridiculous.</p><p>All that subtle pouting almost made Hancock take it back, tell her he wanted a different flavor.</p><p>Almost.</p><p>She might be pulled under the current of her demons but it’s not so convincing to sway him from employing a little humor to their bleary existences. In truth, it only serves to push him into it.</p><p>She settles for a moment, holding the bottle tightly in her right hand. “These things always fizz,” she shakes her head a little as she prepares herself, holding the bottle out as far as her arms will go before she takes the plunge. The irony almost makes Hancock loose his cool but he manages by the skin of his teeth merely to nod sagely, waiting impatiently for her to hand over the mixer. Harper twists the cap just a little, enough for the pop<em>fizz</em> to sound. She thinks, for a moment, it’ll be normal – you let the air in slowly, the carbonation out at the same rate and it soothes the raging chemical reaction. At first, when the soda <strong>snarls</strong> she tries to clamp her hand around it to stifle the steady eruption that she is anticipating. Instead of tilting it towards Hancock or anywhere else, she tugs it close to her body to absorb the damage like falling on a grenade.</p><p>Harper makes a mildly horrified face as half the bottle fizzes and empties itself all down her front, dripping along her arms. For his part, he flinches at the sound but the absolute geyser of sticky-sweet soda trips his humor and he can no longer hold in his laughter.</p><p>Another thunderclap makes her jump and she loses her footing, bare foot slipping on the aged linoleum that is now coated in sticky-sweetness. She up-ends, her feet more in the air than not and her bottom taking most of the impact. Luckily, she managed not to land directly on her tailbone. She doesn’t have the presence of mind to let go of the bottle, as if losing it would be <em>worse</em>. As she falls, most of what remained in the bottle slips up through a fortuitous break in the cover her hand had created and comes splashing back down against her when she lands.</p><p>When all is said and done Harper, soaked by Cherry Nuka practically from head to toe and sitting in a small lake of it, clutching the almost-empty bottle, looks up to Hancock but only manages to keep a straight face for half a second. Hysterical giggles burst from her lips like the soda from the bottle; she’s sticky and wet and sore and it is <em>the funniest thing</em>.</p><p>She is half-hyperventilating when she wipes her hand on a dry spot on her thigh and reaches it out for him, barely manages a breathy “<em>John</em>” as a plea for assistance. She’s not sure why, because she doesn’t think she could stand even with his help. She might just lie there, in a puddle of her favorite soda, until time takes her.</p><p>He had intended to catch her hand as she fell but had needed to use it to prop himself up on the crumbling counter, doubled over with laughter that echoed hers. He folded in half under the weight of his laughter, hands on his knees as tears of mirth coated his cheeks. His deep, raspy laugh clashes against the uproar in the storm, her Geiger counter alarming faintly in the background of all the ruckus. Part of him finds it curious that Preston hadn’t made an appearance out of concern.</p><p>His name slides smoothly over his mind and settles like a welcome little warmth but he has bigger radroaches to fry like her marinating on the floor in sugar water. He reaches an arm out and grasps her by the elbow, hauling her to her feet despite the slippery mess at her feet. “Don’t want to attract the bloatflies.” He makes a face of distaste but it doesn’t last very long amidst his laughter.</p><p>For her part, Harper is still laughing, her breath all but a ghost in the midst of her boisterous amusement. She hurts everywhere, between her misstep and her mirth. They stand together but apart in the ruined kitchen, herself and the floor covered in what seemed like more cola than could possibly exist in one bottle, and him just trying to breath somewhat evenly again.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
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    <p>She makes a face, equal parts amused and faux-flustered, at his remarks as she finds her feet beneath her and her full height, slightly less than his own. Harper almost missed the electric current of skin, however different from her own, against hers for the second time that evening but catches the buzz in her veins as she loses it entirely by letting go. Her hands move to the front of her blue Vault 111 jumper and she skirts the puddle as to not be practically pressed against him as she slides the zipper down.</p><p>Hancock catches himself staring at the zipper as it loudly trails down the track; Harper wasn’t particularly worried about appearances ever but she had as of yet just stripped to nothing in front of him. In general, she would be half undressed when emerging to have a conversation with him but they had spent much more time on the road together than in the relative safety of Sanctuary. The ghoul mayor was struck but just how loud the damnable zipper sounded, despite the crack of thunder around them.</p><p>“Well, they used to say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” she starts, her laughter bubbling to the occasional chortle as she wriggles her way to her underwear in the middle of the kitchen, “so…the new phrase could be ‘you catch more bloatflies with Cherry Nukas than sweat’?” She snorts a little at her own joke, bending to release her feet from the confines of her suit. She bundles it up and turns, squatting beside the puddle to mop it with her now-stained outfit, body bare except for a pair of ragged panties. They were, thankfully, once black and now faded to a mottled gray, as clean as possible in a post-apocalyptic future with minimal detergent options that don’t also remove your skin. Her chest remains uncovered and, aside from a light pink tinge to her cheeks, she appears unperturbed by her near-nudity. The parts of her skin untouched by the sun are less red, lighter, but no less freckled than her face and arms.</p><p>He struggles to keep up with her stories at the moment, although he generally appreciates snippets of Pre-War life she shares with him. But he is a man that appreciates the form of another human, albeit he isn’t picky about their parts, and hers is just there and she’s talking about <em>honey</em>.</p><p>She’s goofy and he appreciates that. It’s top on the growing list of things he appreciates about the former Vault Dweller, although he doesn’t know if being frozen for 200 years counts as dwelling, strictly speaking. He pries his eyes from her form to find her face instead and smirks. “That’s a good look for you.” There’s no pretense in his words; he likes to flirt, something she is slowly learning when she hears him say it to just about anyone up to and including those that he probably <em>shouldn’t</em> try it with like Preston.</p><p>Harper shifts to standing when the small lake has become but a faded stain and tosses the useless thing into the unused sink, holding her hands out as if she does not want to touch her own skin. “You’re lucky I’ve got some water in my room, or else I’d have to ask you to go get some. I doubt I’d survive walking outside like this, let alone make it even so far as the pump, let alone the purifier.”</p><p>In general, the idea of doing someone’s grunt work is low on his list of things he’d want to do for amusement’s sake but the thought is stretched and warped as she continued.</p><p>With her arms still outstretched like a zombie in movies she had watched en masse, she passed him to make for her bedroom. “I might need your help with the backside. Limited supply, wasn’t exactly planning on a bath tonight.”</p><p>And she is still laughing, just a little, as she walks down the hall with Hancock following with a grin of his own to too far behind her.</p>
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